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Back to Ticul, and don Lorenzo

We made another trip to Ticul to visit with don Lorenzo. Actually it was a different WE than the last time we went just 2.5 short weeks ago. This time it was a girl adventure (me, C, and jFr). Started out kind of crazy.

Here's the sort of long abreviated version - A whole gaggle of us had gone to friend jFr's house for a nosh and drink event with other friends visiting from Detroit on Thursday evening. jFr, C, and I firmed our departure plans for the next day to head to Santa Elena and The Pickled Onion for lunch, then to Ticul to visit don Lorenzo's taller.

Got an email early Friday am from jFr, her car had been hit during the night, actually at 4:30am cuz she heard the crash, checked the clock for time and rolled back over. The car was hit, it would still be hit in a few hours. Anyway, so the email came and I called to see if she needed pictures taken since I knew she had just recently broken her camera after an unfortunate and unexpected pool plunge, but that's another story.

Anyway, she said yes to the photos so off I went. When I arrived at her house the Policia Estatal were just arriving, as was the insurance representative. As the policeman, Fernandez, and I were approaching jFr's house from down the street the cry comes for help. A man was on the ground so off went Fernandez, next thing you know 3 police trucks come in and an ambulance shows up. An icecream vendor was on the ground, no, not struck by a car or biten by a dog, but stumbling around drunk. Ambulance guys take his bp, do a few checks, pronounce him drunk and take off to let the police deal with him. Then photographers show up and take photos of him and jFr's wrecked car, who knows what story they will come up with. Anyway, the icecream vendor was trying to buy off the police with the offer of icecream, but alas his trici-cart was empty. AND anyway the police weren't taking the offer, even before it was discovered his cart was empty. The police went and got the icecream boss, and a sober guy to drive the trici-cart back to the shop. Drunk guy really didn't want anyone driving away on his trici-cart so put up a little bit of a struggle, but was not up to the task of offering serious resistence. So to try to shorten this up - icecream boss takes drunk guy, sober guy takes trici-cart, insurance guy makes damage report, police watch everything and offer assistance, Debi takes pictures, jFr provides documents and info as required.

OK, back to the car, now at 0430 there are no other cars parked on the road as all the neighbors with cars put their cars across the street in the off street parking in front of Niplito after the store closes. The road is fairly wide here, however - at 0430 a white Nissan could not seem to miss the one car parked on the street and hit the left rear panel of jFr's subaru. It broke the light covering, but not the bulbs, and caused a bit of crumpling to the left side panel, nothing serious enough to put the vehicle out of comission. It did however push the Subaru about 3.5 meters up onto the sidewalk where the car came to rest about 20cm from the facade of jFr's house, her freshly painted house. So overall the car was ok, we got the report done, moved the car, and were able to get on with our trip as planned with only a slight delay in take off. The pictures I took I loaded off to jFr's computer and actually moved them not copy'd them so don't have any photos to post of either car or drunk guy. You may have asked, ¿How do they know it was a white Nissan? Good Question! We know because in addition to the entire right front light assembly, there were multiple pieces of white car impaled into jFr's car and scattered around on the ground. Some of these pieces actually had Nissan stamped into them. Quite a piece of detective work there!

OK, so I went home, C picked me up, we then picked up jFr, and after a stop for some moolah we were heading down the road. First stop after all this was in Santa Elena at friend Valerie's Pickled Onion restaurant. And this time I took food pictures, we each ordered something different.

jFr had avacado soup and greek salad, C had avacado soup and a meatball plate, and I had a chicken with capers plate.ummm, ummm, good! Great food, and a lovely visit with Valerie since she wasn't too busy this day!

After lunch we were off to Ticul. We had a great time, bought a few pots, took lots of photos, and had a nice chat with don Lorenzo. He was quite enthusiastic about telling us about grafting trees, especially citrus trees. Apparently he and a son are creating grafted citrus with various combination of sour orange/lime, sweet orange/sour orange, etc.

The kiln was being unloaded while we were there, which was cool to see how they pack it and all. And one of the workers was mixing up big batches of clay; it was really interesting to see and hear about how they process the hard rock clay they gather; breaking down the hard rock clay, soaking, mixing with the really fine polvo/sand, and then mixing by hand into big balls for working into the pots.

We had a good day, got to chat, learn a little more about each other, laugh, and bond.

We were rolling into Merida about 1730, and as C&G had cocktail hour scheduled at their house with same Detroit group as night before at jFr's house we all trooped over there for another visit. Got home about 2030, hot, tired, a little tipsy, and needing rest. Had a dip in the pool, fed kitties, answered emails, watched TV for an hour, read a bit, and off to bed by 2300. It was a very good day. - well better for C and me, than jFr; but only because it was her car.